


The Obvious Solution

by writerfan2013



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Love Triangle, Sherlolly - Freeform, sort of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-03-31 23:42:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 10,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3997618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerfan2013/pseuds/writerfan2013
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Set post season 2). Molly is sick of her stupid empty life and the stupid giant lie she is keeping for Sherlock. She needs comfort, a little company - but the right candidate never seems to come along. A love triangle, a mystery and a lot of complicated emotions. Ultimately Sherlolly. Molly is fierce and feisty in this. Just saying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The trouble with sleeping with someone is that you can never react to them the same way again.

Now when he walks into my lab I go hot all over. I actually start sweating. My chest throbs with how hard and fast my heart is pounding. And I feel weak and watery at the knees, although that might just be the guilt.

He, of course, maintains an imperious indifference to my presence.

I keep looking at him, even though this makes it worse. Sometimes he catches my eye and looks right back, his trademark hard stare, and I try to work out if it Means Something - that is, if it means something more than For God's Sake Molly Stop Staring People Will Notice.

I worry about John in particular. I mean, this business with Sherlock... John kind of owns Sherlock. He's possessive about him. Well, so would I be. So I am, in fact, now that this has happened. But John's had Sherlock a long time. Plus, of course, John and I have been an item through all this upheaval. It would probably seem pretty tactless of me if John found out what happened between me and Sherlock.

I think Sherlock thinks this too. He is certainly jumpy around John when I'm in the room.

But is it cheating, when your boyfriend was only a substitute for the person you've cheated on him with?

I suspect it probably is.

I think John will be upset when he finds out.

OK. I know he will. And I feel awful about that. But this thing, this Sherlock thing, well it has been a long time coming. No pun intended. Surely John knows that. Surely he will understand.

What a fool I am. Of course he won't understand. He will be hurt and angry and he will have every right to be.

And standing here, up to my elbows in the deceased, with Sherlock's pale blue eyes fixed on me like he finds my work fascinating, captivating, erotic, like he is thinking at Hadron-Collider speed how he can get me back into bed to show me a few new things he has casually learned over years of having at all times the most magnetic personality in the room – I find I don't care about John's feelings. Not one bit.

That makes me a bad person.

But Sherlock is still staring at me, his eyes widening and his nostrils flaring, and I still really, really don't care.

* * *

 

_Hi Molly. Fancy a pint? My treat. Just want a chat with someone who doesn't think he was an arse. J._

I stared at the text for a long time, my thumb held carefully away from the screen so I was in no danger of typing a reply before I had fully thought things through.

A drink with John. A chat. About Sherlock, obviously. Such a terrible idea in lots of ways. John was unhappy, depressed, obsessing over why Sherlock had done it. John needed to move on and couldn't. Sitting around talking about it with me would not help him forget Sherlock.

And I was not going to be any good at cheering him up or at reminiscing about the good old days. Firstly although I am a reasonable liar, the lie I was keeping for Sherlock was so huge that it threatened to burst free at any moment. It bubbled up to my lips like a foul belch after too many lagers on a first date, ruining your chance of a goodnight kiss with the bloke you have allowed to get you drunk...

Secondly, those good old days. They never existed. My relationship with Sherlock was one of subservience and invisibility. He would show up, all arrogance and control, and lay out what he expected to happen. I made it happen. End of. He barely acknowledged me. I made a play for him, a couple of times – who wouldn't? – but he just let my unsubtle advances slide off him like a duck dodging raindrops. Him and The Work. Also, him and John. Sherlock only had room for one human at a time and from the moment he walked into my lab, John Watson was that human.

Everyone assumed it was a gay thing. This was mainly because of Sherlock. His total indifference to girls. His total indifference to everybody, really, but also the way he would deny girlfriends but not deny that he and John were an item. He was only doing it to wind John up, but because it worked so well, he kept doing it until their coupledom was established as a widely believed fact.

So between The Work, capital letters, God he was pretentious, and John, I was just a convenient nonentity with the ability to wheel in a trolley containing something Sherlock wanted to take a look at.

And as for John - Nice enough, but dull. Solid. Reliable. All those things which don't make your pulse quicken.

A bit old for me, too, to be honest. I mean. Nice blue eyes. In good shape for his age. But no spark.

Still, a drink. It wasn't like he was hitting on me. He wanted a hand to hold (another total turnoff) and a bit of company.

"Anything interesting?" asked my friend Harpinder after I'd been goggling at this text for five minutes.

"Not really," I said. "What do you think about this new shift pattern they're threatening?"

"It's crap," she pronounced. "Everybody loses. I don't know what they were thinking."

"Massive efficiency savings, that's what," I told her. "If we can all use off peak travel it cuts our outgoings and gives them a reason to refuse a salary review next year."

"If just seems really unfair on people," Harpinder said. "I mean, some of us have lives."

She clapped her hand to her mouth. "Oh god," she said. "Sorry. I didn't mean -"

"It's all right," I said with a nonchalant air. "I know I don't usually provide much of the gossip round here. But as it happens I do have something going on tonight "

"Ooh, get you! A date?"

"Yup," I lied, and with that, John's fate was sealed.


	2. Chapter 2

I didn't overdo it. Scarlet lips and plunging neckline are all very well for a man like Sherlock, for whom the phrase tall, dark and annoyingly indifferent was invented, but for a bloke like John, something a bit more low-key was called for.

I went with the pink lippie, lashings of mascara, and a sparkly top. Jeans. Nothing says We Are Just Friends (For The Moment) like a sparkly top teamed with workaday jeans.

I would have gone just in my work clothes (a selection from World of Taupe, but who cares when intimate fluids from the deceased may brighten up your outfit at any moment?) but for Harpinder's remark. I had been a little off the scene lately. The business with Jim had put the wind up me frankly. He had seemed nice, well, he had seemed available. Thank God I didn't sleep with him. Well, only a bit. Oral doesn't count, right?

Anyway, the experience put me off and also seemed to have cast some kind of aura over me like a leper's curse. Men dodged and weaved to avoid me.

That was all right for a while, and then it was vital because I had a supposedly dead detective in my flat, but soon I missed having any social life and wanted to go out, - not with Sherlock, obviously, because he was busy crafting the world's greatest deception, et cetera, and breaking hearts into the bargain - but with someone real, someone I could be on equal footing with, someone who would be nothing more than a boyfriend.

I wasn't looking for love. I had been in love and out of it and when a dark and difficult man has you by the heart then romance doesn't get much of a look in. It's all longing and desperation and pointless, miserable hope. It is all about him and I was ready, more than ready, for a little fun which was all about me.

Nothing could displace Sherlock in my heart. But I was willing to leave hearts out of it and budge up to make a little room in my bed.

Hence the sparkle. And the lippie. John was not in my sights, but when you work shifts it is so hard to meet anyone who doesn't work shifts. John worked shifts. And although he was pleasant but unpromising, he might have a good-looking friend.

The Rose and Crown was a brown and yellow place, with maroon tiles on the outside and glossy ceramic window mouldings too. Inside, traditional frosted glass separated the various nooks and crannies. Faux oil lamps cast unlikely white light onto the assortment of City types, students and even the odd clump of locals thronging the saloon.

John was at the bar, leaning on one elbow a pint of Guinness beside him. He straightened up as I crossed the carpet, and came to kiss me on the cheek. "What are you having?"

He looked tired, but determined. His hair, which had turned from light brown to almost complete grey in the last year, was neatly trimmed, and his chin was very clean shaven, as if he had done it right before coming out. That was nice. Like he had made an effort. Same as me.

I accepted a pint of Hoegaarden and breathed in its lemony scent before taking a gulp.

John gave a tight smile and gestured towards a booth which had just become free. We dived for it and I found myself in total privacy with a man I was sworn to deceive, who almost certainly wanted to sit and talk about the person I was to deceive him about.

I swigged lager and smiled disarmingly at John, and asked how he was.

"Fine. Fine. Better. Thanks. You?"

"Not bad," I said.

We lapsed into silence. Scintillating this was not.

It was as if Sherlock was there, sitting cross legged on the table between us, in his heavy wool coat and shiny black shoes, frowning and reading his phone and occasionally breaking off to text us sarcastic commentary on our conversation.

I was not going to be the first to mention him. No way.

John sipped his pint and nodded and looked around the pub and did a bit more nodding. At last he said, "Well," and nodded again.

And suddenly I could not stand it. I cracked. I had to say something before the tension knocked me off my perch. "John," I said.

He raised his eyebrows.

"Have you seen that new Angelina Jolie film," I asked, just desperate for any topic.

And then I saw John's eyes light up. He has blue eyes, a very dark blue like the sea off the coast of Kent, and now they were turned in my direction as if I had just said the exact right thing. "Not yet," he said, and his voice was off hand. "Thinking about going tonight, but then I texted you."

"It looks good," I said, which was true. Two hours of Miss Jolie kicking arse and looking awesome? There could be no bad.

"We could go," John said.

"Ok," I said.

He grinned, and ten years dropped away from his face. "Blimey. A film, with a member of the opposite sex. I _will_ tell everyone it's a date. They've been desperate for me to socialise. "

"Tell me about it," I agreed, and suddenly the pint didn't look so large or the evening so long.

We saw the film. It blew away two hours - three, by the time you've watched the trailers and eaten the popcorn - and then I was back on the street on a rainy spring night, with John Watson.

"Walk you to your bus," he said, and it wasn't a suggestion.

While I waited for it, he stood with me, hands in pockets, shuffling from foot to foot - not nervously, but deliberately, like a man trained to stand sentry for long hours. Which I supposed he had been. He never spoke about the Army. He never spoke about himself. It was all Sherlock, and I knew how wearying that could be.

It had been nice to have a bit of company, to be seen out and about with a man even though it was not really a date, and best of all it was nice not to have to make conversation. "We should do this again," I suggested.

His eyes crinkled. "You're a glutton for punishment. I'm not much company."

"I don't need much," I said. "I'm pretty self sufficient."

He laughed. "Ok. I'll give you a ring in the week."

"Films are good," I said. "Or maybe go and do something. You know. Bowling or something."

He looked at me. Clearly could not visualise me with a bowling ball in my hand and those weird American shoes on my feet.

"Or something," I said firmly.

He took his hands out of his pockets as my bus rumbled up. "Goodnight, Molly. Thanks for a nice evening."

He leaned in and kissed my cheek, his lips warm on my skin and his aftershave spicy and golden. It was quite different to the Hello kiss. "Night John," I said, and gave him a peck back, veering from his mouth which was now obviously on offer, and carefully landing my lips between his cheekbone and jaw.

It's funny how a person can suddenly spring from _Some Bloke I Know_ into being a _Man_. The sexual jolt. It was as if a new John burst through the saggy grey shape of the old John, and appeared, half an inch bigger all round, glowing and available and possessing skin and chest hair and thighs and, concealed in his jeans, a dick.

I honestly never thought of him that way before. But now, on the bus home, I was equal parts kicking myself for not having gone for it and kissed his mouth, and enjoying the shivering certainty that next time I saw him, I would.


	3. Chapter 3

He rang me the next day. Not at 9:01. Just as well because I was in a meeting, along with Harpinder, about the shift patterns and the building refit. Words were had. Tempers rose. I defended my team and got accused of empire-building.

Tom Sands had the nerve to mention Sherlock, accusing me of living in a bubble of reflected glamour and forgetting that Sherlock turned out to be a liar and a fraud who had brought me and my team into disrepute.

Tom Sands was a snake of the first order. Pity he was the Director of Services.

I hissed back at him and Harpinder elbowed me into submission before I put my job on the line.

I seethed at my desk for a bit and then cracked on with work. What else can you do? The powers that be control your life, and quitting is your only recourse. This job is one of the most prestigious in London. I was not going to resign. Tom Sands knew this.

A phone call at this moment, even from the newly-discovered sexy John Watson, would not have been welcome.

I took biopsies and muttered curses on Tom Sands' balding freckled head and then my phone rang.

I don't think I've ever peeled off a pair of blue latex gloves so quickly. "John!"

A dry baritone. "Not quite."

My heart dropped away through my shoes. I swivelled away in my chair as Harpinder, swathed in her plastic apron, peered at me from the examination table. "What do you need?" I asked. I had to be straight to the point, with him. He could rarely risk a call and had only ever done so when he was in trouble.

"You," he said. "Come to the incinerator suite. I have something for you."

"When?"

"Obviously now, Molly."

He rang off.

"Something up with John?" Harpinder asked.

"Different John," I said. "Anyway, delivery's come for me, got to sign for it. Back in a tick."

I ripped off my lab coat and ran for the corridor. The incinerator suite is across the other side of the hospital and it takes about five minutes, running, to get there. It's like Heathrow - you might be technically at the airport, but you are still a mile from your gate.

I got there and bashed my card against the lock. One of the porters, an old bloke with no hair and yellow skin, was hanging round the door. "Excuse me," I said as he got in my way. "Medical staff only. "

He cringed away but said, "Let me in, Molly," and his voice was unmistakable.

I jumped a mile, peered at the ancient face, and let Sherlock in.

Inside the incinerator suite, he looked around - nobody there - and straightened up. From inside the blue porter's coat he produced a parcel wrapped in yellow plastic. "Burn this," he said.

"The incinerator isn't for general waste," I said automatically, but I was taking Sherlock in, how thin he was, how pale under the yellow make up, how his eyes had gained sad lines around the corners, and how his energy, which always fired him from within like the fierce engine of a Mallard breaking the speed record in 1933, sleek and fast and hauling a thousand tons, was pale and weak today.

I hadn't seen him for five months. Nearly six. I had assumed he was abroad.

"You can't just toss in any old thing," I said.

"I think the million degrees centigrade will cope," Sherlock said drily.

I took the parcel. "What is it?"

He just blinked slowly at me.

"Ok." I grabbed the Destruct sheet and rapidly processed the thing. In real life, you can't just open an oven door and chuck stuff in like at the end of a high school horror film. You have to do paperwork.

Sherlock roamed around in the desolate white foyer while I worked. "Seen John?" he asked.

"Yes. Last night."

He waited. Of course it was beneath his dignity to ask outright.

"He's all right," I said. "Seemed pretty cheerful, in fact."

Sherlock looked pained. "Good," he said.

That's the problem with faking your own death. You want your friends to recover, but it hurts when they do. "Are you coming back?" I asked, as I always did.

"Better you know nothing," he said.

I sighed. "Right."

He crumpled himself into aged porter mode again. "Best be off."

I carded the door and held it back.

He bent his head, cast one look up at me through dark lashes, and shuffled off.

No thank you. No goodbye.

I got back to the lab and Harpinder said, "Your phone's been ringing."


	4. Chapter 4

Sparkly top, jeans, lippie, mascara, newest underwear, bit of Nina Ricci down the cleavage. And not bowling, after all, but ice skating at Lee Valley.

"You any good at this?" I asked as we tied the ridiculously heavy boots onto our feet. They felt like concrete blocks, like I was being set up for a Mob push off the end of a pier.

"Never done it before," said John.

"What? Never!"

He shrugged. "Not much call for it in Iraq. Or Afghanistan."

"I guess not."

We clip clopped to the edge of the rink. Chill air swept our faces and skate marshalls in red tracksuits sailed past backwards, legs crossing over and over. Chart songs echoed around the vast white space.

I grabbed John's hand. "Come on." His fingers were rough and firm in mine. I stepped onto the ice, waited for him to make the tentative transition, and then we wobbled off.

He fell first and took me down with him. God, ice is cold. And hard. Experts skirted round us with carefree expressions.

I scrambled to my feet and helped him up.

"Right," he said, with the air of a man who has never yet been defeated by any physical challenge. "Let's go."

He refused my hand this time and shot off on his own. I pursued him, overtook him, but after a couple of laps he had conquered it and was skimming along, laughing. I fell in beside him. We used to skate when I was a kid, and you don't forget.

"Ok," he said after a while. "New challenge." He turned around and started skating backwards. "Oh. This is actually easier - "

"It's stopping that's the hard part," I yelled after him as he wove in and out of the nonchalant and fast moving crowds.

"Not stopping," he called back, the wind in his hair.

I laughed and hacked across the ice after him. "Corners are the best... "

"Can't catch me," he said, evading me as I swung foot over foot, taking the corner on a flier.

"Oh yes I can... "

* * *

 

Later we huddled in the rinkside cafe slurping chocolate and getting warm, our feet anchored to the rubber floor by the weight of our skates. John could have sat the other side of the table but sat beside me instead. We both played up the cold a bit.

"How are your hands?" he asked.

"Should have worn gloves," I said.

"Here," he said, and let go his polystyrene cup to wrap his hands round mine and chafe them.

Ah, the old moves are the best.

I looked sideways at him. He had both my hands in one of his now, and was gripping his cup with the other, taking sips and gazing out at the ice, deep in thought. His thumb moved over the back of my left hand, absentmindedly.

I smiled. Of course he would be the affectionate type. Those eyes. The soft hair. The sad smile. He gave loyalty and affection and never got much back in return.

I followed his gaze and found him tracking the circuits of a girl in a short skirt and bobble hat, the picture of lissom health and energy. Her legs got a lot of attention, especially from behind.

I grinned to myself. Yeah, lost puppydog, but also incorrigible lech.

The sparkly top had remained coddled under my coat in this freezing place. My legs were not my best assets. "More skating or home," I asked.

"Home?"

"Ok."

We both got on my bus with no discussion. John's knee rested against mine and after the first lurch around a bend, so did his thigh. I wriggled a bit so that I was snug up against him on the seat. Very nice.

I had missed this. Closeness and delicious anticipation and just fun. Being Sherlock's friend, being his helpmeet, being his rejected would-be girlfriend, is many things (privilege, excitement, pain, anxiety, thrill, danger) but it was not fun.

John reached across and got hold of my hand.

He didn't say anything, but gave me a look which asked if I was ok with this development.

I smiled back. "Stopping is the hardest part," I said.

"Not stopping," he said and gave my fingers a squeeze.

"Ok."

Inside my flat we took off our coats and I put the kettle on and went to the loo while John poked through my iPod. I stared at myself in the mirror and heard Smooth Classics come on. Interesting choice. Background music. No-distractions kind of music.

I looked good tonight. I felt good. And this was only fun. Fun was good. Could I remember how to have fun? Jim had seemed like fun, and then he stole my staff pass and turned out to be insane, properly, dangerously insane. Thanks to him I was carrying around more baggage than a bus to Terminal 5.

But not tonight. Tonight I could ditch that shadow of the past and be spontaneous and carefree. Couldn't I?

My lips seemed very pale in the mirror. I seemed to be all eyes. And my eyes looked lonely, secretive, scared. Like a man on the run from life itself, a man incinerating an unknown package, a man who could not even allow his friends to recognise him. A man who scorned feelings but showed his fear and his need to me.

I shook myself. No thoughts of Sherlock now. He was as much of the baggage as Jim, and neither of them were sitting on my sofa offering a bit of harmless flirtation.

I emerged sporting fresh lipstick and a dash more fragrance inside my bra, and John was sitting on the sofa. Everything was very neat. I had purposely tidied the flat in case we came back. Nobody needs to know what a slob you really are, right?"Cup of tea or wine?" I asked.

"Wine?"

I fetched it, he poured and then we sat back on the sofa with the brimming glasses on the coffee table in front of us, and he leaned across and kissed me.

His mouth was gentle and searching, and his palms were either side of my face just touching, just guiding, and then sliding down to my neck and shoulders as I kissed him back. I slid sideways on the sofa and pulled him down on top of me and in two seconds our shoes were off and the coffee table was pushed aside and we were locking lips in wonderful abandon, kissing and stroking and gasping and then giggling and having to come up for air.

"Well," John said, pulling me upright.

"Oh yes," I said.

"You have the most beautiful hair," he told me, running his fingers down it.

"I like your hands," I said.

We kissed and cuddled for a long time and my greatest feeling was relief, that this was so simple, so passionate and so lovely.

"I should go home," he said eventually.

"You don't have to," I said. "I don't mean that. I mean you can stay. In my bed. But just - "

"Ok," he said, and took off his jumper.

I kissed his jaw, his neck. He smelled fresh and clean, even after all the skating and, frankly, the snogging. I closed my eyes and saw him again racing round the rink, hair flying, hands outstretched.

His fingertips were inside the back of my sparkly top. He bent and kissed my throat and down to my collarbone. He breathed in deeply. "God that's good," he said as I ran my hands over his shoulders. Then he winced.

I froze.

"It's all right," he said, reaching back and moving my hand gently away. "Old injury."

"Oh."

"Have you got any?" he asked lightly.

I thought of Sherlock using me to get his way, over and over. I thought of Sherlock's intense eyes and deft fingers and his utter coldness. "No," I said.

John nodded. And that was our agreement not to talk of old wounds.


	5. Chapter 5

I stood up and took John's hand. "Just - "

"Sure," he said. "I'm not really a first date kind of guy anyway."

"Not that this was a date," I reminded him.

"Of course."

We stood in my bedroom and kissed, our bodies pressed together. John ran his hands all over me, just stopping short every time of anywhere too intimate. The perfect gentleman, but I didn't need my medical degrees to know he was turned on. His hips were bumped up against mine and he backed me gradually towards the bed and lowered me down with his left arm catching me just before I fell. We rolled, and back again and he was half on top of me with one leg between mine and his left hand roaming over my ribs and belly while he leaned on his right elbow, caressing my hair and face.

"So what's your first date limit?" I asked between breathless kisses.

"You tell me," he said. He placed my hand on his belt. "Might be this."

I trailed my fingers around to the buckle and unfastened it. "Could be," I said. His thigh was muscular under the denim.

His hand was around the side of my right breast, just gently. "Maybe this," he said softly, and bent over me and kissed me through the sparkly top, which I now knew was not going to get much of a look in.

"Maybe this," I said, unzipping him and pushing his jeans away.

He pulled off my top and my jeans too and I lifted his t shirt over his head and we crawled under the covers and writhed around and oh my god it was good.

"I've got to get up in the morning," John said after a while as my hand went to find out how aroused he was.

"Mnn hmmm."

"I mean I really have."

"Yup."

A pause. He gasped as I touched him. "Oh that's nice. Jesus. Yes."

"You'll have to stop me if you want me to stop," I said. He was hard and hot and panting into my hair.

"I don't want you to stop. But - "

"You have to get to work. "

"Yes."

I laughed, wriggled down abruptly, and kissed him through his boxers where my hand had been. "Ok," I said, climbing back up to eye level while he regained the power of speech. "Come on, let's sleep."

"Ok... "

He wrapped his arms around me. I threw my leg over his and gave him plenty of opportunity to notice how turned on I was too.

We lay for a bit in the dark. Traffic noise penetrated the single glaze windows. There is no respite from noise in London.

"Molly."

"Yes."

"I just need to - "

His hand was sliding down to his shorts. "Sorry - "

"Let me help," I said.

"Oh god please."

I let him pull off his boxers - Mr First Date, after all - and then wrapped my hand around him. He took in a shuddering breath. As I drew my hand slowly up and down, finding what got the most intense reaction, he closed his eyes and thrust his fingers into my free hand and held on tight.

"Thank you," he breathed, eyes still closed.

"It's ok," I said, kissing his chest. His skin was smooth and taut, gorgeous. I kissed him a little lower, my hand still on him drawing out gasps and tremors, and then a little lower still. "You can owe me," I said.

"Molly - "

I felt him nearing the end and slid up to kiss his mouth and look at his face. He opened his eyes and gazed steadily at me. His hand joined mine to control the rhythm and that was the end, hot and wet over my fingers. I kissed him hard and we clung to each other.

"Well," he said at last. "That wasn't quite what I pictured when I suggested ice skating."

I handed him the box of tissues. "Nice though?"

"Oh my god. Yes." He paused while we adjusted ourselves. "Do you...want anything?"

"Um," I said.

He waited.

"I'm ok," I said.

"Sure? I don't want to leave you hanging."

"As you're not a first date kind of guy," I said.

"Ah."

A pause. "I could be," he said then. "If it's OK with you."

"It's fine with me."

"Ok then."

Another pause.

"Do you need a minute?" I asked. "Or ... a hand?"

I heard his breath go in sharply. "No," he said. "I'm getting there very nicely just thinking about it..."

What followed was not dignified, especially on my part, but who's to know? I think I wrestled him for the knickers and then grabbed condoms out of my bedside drawer. He kissed me everywhere he could find and explored me with lips and tongue and fingers until I said, "Please, please, get on with it -" and then he chuckled and did.

Yeah, so it was more lust than romance. But that's how it goes, sometimes. And I could feel again, I felt alive, I felt human, I felt freed from the stupid burdens placed on me, I felt... female. "God you're lovely," he said, his hand under my bottom, his eyes closed once again. I pulled him into me again and again and could not get him near enough. Hunger overtook me. I had my nails in his back and my teeth in his shoulder and he came again and then so did I.

Colours pulsed in front of my eyes for a while and eventually I came round to where I was and who I was under.

"Sweetheart," said John, "that was quite something."

"Yeah."

He tucked my hair behind my ears. "You are full of surprises," he said. He laughed. "And I always thought you were shy. You hardly speak when -" He stopped.

"I'm not shy," I said. "I probably should have mentioned that." I was only nervous around Sherlock. But I thought it best to leave his name out of my bedroom.

"I'm pleased you're not shy," said John. He gave me a squeeze.

"I'm pleased you are a first date kind of guy," I said.

"Yeah... sorry."

"What for?"

"Sometimes it's nice to save things."

"Hmmn," I said. "And sometimes it's nice to get the first time out of your system."

He didn't like that. Went all quiet and contemplative, flinging himself onto the other side of the bed. "Am I just something to be got out of your system," he asked after a long while.

Oh god. Emotional stuff at one in the morning. "Not just," I said. "But, come on, John. Think lust. Think months of singledom. Think consenting adults."

"Huh."

"Anyway," I said. "That was only the first time. There will be others. If you want. It doesn't have to be a big thing. It can just be fun."

Most blokes would perk right up at the idea of something just for fun, especially, sex, just for fun. Not John though. "Let's just see how it goes," he said.

"Ok." Oh my God. We just did it and already he's overthinking a future I have not even begun to consider. "Fine."

"I will call you," he said. "I'm not brushing you off. I just don't really do - casual."

"Right," I said. I tore my eyes from the ceiling where for months a fantasy Sherlock had loomed over me in bed, where for months a real Sherlock had cast shadows as he sprawled uninvited on my duvet to cogitate while I was at work.

That ceiling had seen some things and now it was seeing me lose patience with the struggle for some no-strings fun. "John. Please. Let's sleep. I don't really do discussion. This is a brand new thing, let's not get heavy."

"Sorry."

"It's ok, but, you know. Now is probably not the moment." And now I'd descended from the peak of lust fulfilled, I could picture Sherlock's shadow right there on my ceiling, hair ruffled by a night breeze, chin tilted in a challenging manner. Car headlights slid around the room like searchlights at a movie premiere, with Sherlock the top billing. His spectre flickered arrogantly as lights swam round him. He was unselfconscious. No way would Sherlock waste precious brain time on post-coital analysis.

"Sorry," John said. Again.

"OK."

I lay wide awake, looking up at the accusing ceiling and listening to the traffic on the Roman Road, and thinking that the sex was OK and the man was OK too if he could bring things down a notch or two, and that overall the evening had gone - OK. I mean, this was just sex. I was owed some fun, preferably with a man who was neither insufferable nor insane. And this was perfect, this was harmless fun.

This doesn't mean anything, I thought, and the dark shadow on the ceiling smirked at me, turned up its collar and sloped away.

* * *

Next morning John made me coffee in bed - definitely regaining some points - and then went in the shower while I drank it.

I was just about at the dressing-gown stage and wondering what to wear for work, when the doorbell rang. I stumbled out muttering, unchained the door and wrenched it open and there, in a high-vis waterproof jacket and holding a lit cigarette, was Sherlock.

 


	6. Chapter 6

"Aren't you going to let me in?" Sherlock asked.

"Not smoking, no," I said, thinking:  _Sherlock's batlike hearing, the shower going, the manly jumper on my sofa, the everything_. Sherlock could probably hear the fact that two mugs of coffee had been made.

Sherlock flung away the fag. He looked thin, and white, and terribly tired, but then fluorescent yellow never flattered anyone. He was wearing black jeans, and dirty trainers. His air of superiority was still in place though. "Well?" He raised his eyebrows.

"There's somebody here," I hissed.

He blinked. "A man."

"Yes!"

"Would he know me? I really need to come inside." He craned round, trying to see the cause of my puzzling hesitation.

"Oh, he would know you." I let out a sharp, hysterical noise.

"Damn. Get rid of him."

We stared at each other. He was projecting _Just Do It Molly,_  with a faint note of  _What's Going On?_  I was projecting  _No_ , increasingly faintly.

"Oh god. Give me ten minutes." I shut the door. Shut my eyes. Of course I was going to comply. What else would I do? One night of embarrassingly desperate passion could not wipe away the habit of years.

Yes: immediately and completely, I would do as Sherlock asked. As usual. And he would be indifferent to the enormity of my stupid, wasted devotion.

John appeared, dressed, putting his wallet and phone back in his jeans. "What's up?"

"I need to run," I said, opening my eyes. "Sorry to rush you off, but." But your dead friend is hiding in the stairwell and needs another favour in addition to me not telling you ever or right now that he was alive all along and you grieved for nothing.

"No problem." John gave me a kiss on the cheek. "I'm off. I'll give you a ring."

He left, and the next three minutes were awful as I listened for the sound of him encountering Sherlock on the stairs.

The doorbell went again and I yanked open the door. Sherlock, now in his big coat and holding a carrier bag, came inside the moment the gap was big enough, and pushed past me.

I knew. Before he uttered another word, I knew. Sherlock was vibrating with excitement, with untold news bubbling up like Coke surging for the neck of the bottle.

"I'm coming back," he said, and stepped close to me. "You had to be the first to know, Molly."

My name in his mouth sent a tremor straight down both legs. I blinked and tried to recover and make some offhand response, for form's sake since nothing would really fool him, but there wasn't time: he clasped me in both arms and hugged me fiercely.

"I'm alive," he muttered into my hair. The plastic bag bumped and crackles against my spine. "I'm alive and I can explain it all and I owe you so much and oh God I have missed this, life, real life, the deception is so exhausting and oh my God Molly I can't not, I have to say it, I have to tell you I have missed you and wanted this so much -"

His hands were urgent on my back, then tangling my hair, his eyes blinking signals of desperate longing and love. His light, his fearsome energy, was back, and burning brighter than ever. And for the first time all that white heat was focused on me.

His pale eyes shone into mine like the sun through a shattered bottle on a dusty heath. I was rigid in his grip, in the lens of his attention. And then I could see the empty heath in his eyes, dry gorse bushes, the vivid sky, no birds: Sherlock's awful loneliness.

And I cast my night with John totally aside and stretched up to kiss Sherlock on the mouth, ready, so ready for the release of five years of want in one embrace-

And then the doorbell rang.

"For fuck's sake," I said, wrenching it open. Sherlock sprang aside.

John stood there, beginning a sentence about a forgotten something but then he saw Sherlock.

A moment passed and then Sherlock stepped forward, caught John in his arms before John could faint, and in a throbbing voice made the exact same declaration he had just given me.

Word for word.

 


	7. Chapter 7

"Stand there. Turn your head a little. Great. Now with the hat."

"That bloody hat," said Sherlock, but he put it on.

We were all on the thirtieth floor of a building in east London, in front of a huge view of the white and silver skyline, being snapped for whichever newspaper had booked us today.

The photographer kept up a constant flow of directions while the stylist and the lighting tech scrambled round making Sherlock photogenic. John was in attendance, having firmly reinstated himself as Sherlock's doctor. Apparently the formerly dead need a lot of doctoring.

I wasn't complaining. Sherlock had been so weak that first day or two, and John thought he had a better chance of making him eat in Baker Street - familiar surroundings. I refrained from mentioning Sherlock's longstanding familiarity with my flat, or his habit of emptying my fridge, and let John carry Sherlock off. I hadn't seen either of them since.

I was not keen to begin any conversation with John that started with _So You Knew All Alon_ g. I was no good at midnight heart to hearts; I was pretty certain I would not excel at admissions of enforced betrayal. So Sherlock had stayed in my flat just long enough that morning to ignore a cup of hot sweet coffee while John cried on his shoulder. Then, with a piercing look at me, he was gone.

That was it for a week. John texted me often with updates on Sherlock's progress. Sherlock texted me once, the day he texted the whole staff of St Barts to ask Where are my files? and Tom Sands banned him from the building forever.

Then came an announcement, and headlines, and frenzy: Sherlock was Back!

Sherlock left my name out of his press release. Typical. I'd dodged the blame, but then, I'd also missed the credit.

I was only here today because my lab was temporarily closed for refurbishment, and I lived just over the road.

"Fantastic," said the photographer to Sherlock, "you're a natural."

"I reflect light," said Sherlock. "Your lens perceives it. Naturally."

I snorted with laughter. The photographer gave me a dirty look and I bent my head over my phone.

The journalists, who three years ago had wanted to know every detail of my 'relationship' with Sherlock, had not forgotten my number, or the likelihood of my involvement. The phone went constantly with enquiries about my loyalty and/or my treachery. My work colleagues were just as bad. I was simultaneously popular and leprous.

"Now with John. Lovely. A couple more, great, great, a proper team. And last of all, let's have all three of you."

"What me," I said. My phone chimed yet again. "Sorry. The Guardian again."

"They still after the feminist angle?" John asked, coming over and giving me a squeeze.

I looked at Sherlock. I couldn't help it. He blinked at John's overt affection. Then I glanced away, uncomfortably aware of John's hands on me, his happiness, his plain old lust.

"The identity theft angle," Sherlock guessed, correctly. I sagged in relief. He had seen nothing. "They're tying my faked demise to an upsurge in stolen identity documents."

John rolled his eyes. "At least it's not more about your supposed army of homeless people."

"That's the Mirror," I said. "They love you as a Pied Piper of the dispossessed."

"Don't forget body snatching," Sherlock said as the stylist tittered about with face powder. Sherlock pretended not to see her flustered adoration, instead inspecting the label inside the deerstalker as if for clues.

"Oh yeah, body snatching," said John, with a wink. "Good old Burke and Hare."

Sherlock said, "I wouldn't have thought you'd want Molly associated with such venomous claims." He spoke to John, but his eyes were on me.

John shrugged one shoulder. "It's none of it real," he said.

"I preferred Molly to remain unidentified," Sherlock said, now giving John an icy stare.

"She needs to clear her name," John said. "Professionally."

"I am here you know," I said. "And I don't need -"

-A man to stand up for me. But then the photographer was ready and John and I had to pose one either side of our celebrity friend, Sherlock with his arm over John's shoulders.

"Get Molly in there as well," said the photographer. "She played an equal part in all this."

"Not really," said John. "Molly did most of it," and I couldn't tell if that was a dig.

"It's a better picture if you have your arms round them both," said the photographer firmly.

"Should I smoulder?" Sherlock asked sarcastically.

"If you would," said the bloke, impervious. He stuck his eye to the digital viewfinder as Sherlock's arm snaked around my waist.

The photographer clicked away. "Perfect, great."

Sherlock's baritone simmered beside my forehead. "That ok for you Molly?" His hand was warm, now innocently around my bicep. His breath stirred my hair.

"Fine," I said, with a slight unintentional squeak. "Fine."

"Act natural," instructed the photographer. "Shuffle your feet a bit, loosen up, get comfy. Keep looking this way ok."

I maintained a stony gaze in the direction of the camera as Sherlock ground his right hip against my left.

I didn't read newspapers. I was never going to see these pictures, or know what else the camera saw that day. But I did know that Sherlock tolerated another twenty minutes of the group posing, an unprecedented show of patience, and he pressed close to me for every single shot.

"I've got to run," said John, looking at his watch as we all crowded into the lift afterwards. Sherlock was intent on his phone. "My shift is in an hour. Your shift must be starting as well, Mols."

"Mmn," I said. Mols? One night together and I was Mols? No. Just - no. John, oblivious to his crime, was smiling possessively at me.

I turned my face towards the mirrored wall and caught Sherlock's eye as he did the same. His expression was stern, brows drawn slightly together, but as I locked eyes with him, his lips parted - like puzzlement, like many questions unspoken. I don't know what I looked like, just tired probably, but what I felt was pain, as sharp and sudden as dancing at Christmas and stumbling, drunk and foolish, against the holly wreath. It was not my own stupid situation that pricked like those defensive waxy leaves - it was Sherlock's hurt, transmitted in his questioning gaze, that cut me.

John wittered about engineering works on the Northern line, expounding to the ceiling on the journey from the twentieth floor to the foyer, and Sherlock and I looked at each other all the way down.

By the time we reached the revolving doors Sherlock had reconfigured his expression to its customary tight lipped impatience. His phone beeped, he scowled at it and huffed. "Mothballs."

"What?" said John.

Sherlock was swiping and blinking furiously at his phone. I had apparently resumed invisibility. Whatever moment we'd shared in the lift was gone. Fine.

"Lavender," I said. "Works just as well to keep off the pests." Yes Sherlock, I refuse to be fazed by your randomness, by your embrace and then neglect, refuse to be fazed, in fact, by any of it.

Sherlock turned to me with the pinpoint gaze of a hawk pleased that its dinner is still able to wriggle. "Then get some," he said, and strode away.


	8. Chapter 8

My phone rang again. Tom Sands, at the front of the board room, glared at me.

I mimed _Sorry_ and poked the Decline Call button.

The scientific staff of St Barts, crammed in like bacteria on a Petri dish, shuffled and stretched their legs. Everyone's calendars had been updated at half four this afternoon, so that this meeting occurred as half of us were supposed to be starting our new night shift, keen to crack on and get it over with, and the other half were finishing the new day shift and desperate to get home. Nobody wanted to be here to listen to an update on building works and how management were leading us into a glorious new future.

Typical Tom Sands, to call a meeting at a time convenient for nobody but himself, and then make it a three line whip. We all had better places to be. Well, other places.

_Seeing you this week made me miss you. Fancy a date tomorrow night? John xxxxxx_

The text notification did its double buzz. I buried the phone in my lab coat pocket.

_"If_ we can continue," said Tom in a tone of great sarcasm. Moron. Give him a podium and he started acting like he was Barack Obama. Except Obama probably had more charm and better manners. Tom Sands' presidential success would have to be built on bribery and corruption.

"...the departmental team leaders."

Harpinder elbowed me. "Molly!"

"Um yes." I stood, and just as I did, my phone chirruped with a voicemail message, also from John. I ignored it and Tom's furious glower. "The other department heads and I -" team leaders, bollocks to that - " want to know how long this disruption is going to go on. My lab's been out of action for three days so far with no sign of a completion date, and to put it bluntly, the bodies are piling up."

"That's rather melodramatic," said Sands.

"It's very literal," I said. "I'm unable to carry out anything bar the most basic post mortem checks. and as you perhaps know, the longer a body is left, the more chance there is of deterioration before evidence can be gathered."

"Thank you for that illuminating insight into decomposition. Perhaps I can suggest that you place the bodies into cold storage in order to defer loss of quality? I assume these facilities are still available? -Unless, of course, any of these piled up bodies are liable to unexpectedly come back from the dead-?"

Hilarious. "Ah, there it is," I said. "Not very subtle, Tom."

Harpinder jumped up. " Rotating between labs isn't enough for the workload," she said. "We haven't even been told what this upgrade work is for."

"Remedial structural works," said Tom instantly. "I sent an email round about it."

Liar. But I had Harpinder's elbow in my ribs so I kept quiet.

"So when," I said and then Sherlock burst in.

"I need Molly Hooper and I need her now." His long black coat eddied around his knees. I'd never noticed its pale blue lining before.

"This is a staff meeting," said Tom.

"Patently," said Sherlock. He shrugged off his coat and sniffed at the refreshments table. "The revolting coffee, the glazed expressions."

"You're banned," said Tom.

Sherlock chuckled mirthlessly, and loosed the buttons on his suit jacket. "This isn't the Blind Beggar at chucking out time. This room is in a public area of the hospital and I am a member of the public."

"This is a private meeting," said Tom.

"Molly," said Sherlock.

I am capable of refusing Sherlock. But if it got me out of this godawful meeting, then...

I picked up my bag and began edging towards the door. "Excuse me," I said, possibly to Tom, possibly to the colleagues I was weaving between. "Let me just -"

In the corridor I hissed, "You're going to get me sacked!"

"Excellent. Then you can find a job worthy of your skills and experience."

"This is -"

"Never mind." His jacket was now draped over a fire extinguisher. "Come down to the lab, I need to go over something with you. The stately home case."

The peculiar death of staff at a well known country house had been on all the news channels that morning. Lord Morningside, a software magnate, was in the frame for the latest death, of a female cleaner, referred to by the press as a maid.

"I can't," I whispered, conscious of Sands, and everyone, three feet away behind fancy frosted glass. I grabbed Sherlock's sleeve - magenta cotton, his arm hot through the starched fabric - and dragged him away from the boardroom.

In the stairwell he delicately freed himself from my grip. "Morningside never killed that woman. I can prove it with logic but the police in their usual dreary way want forensic evidence. You have so far failed to come up with anything -"

"Because my lab is shut! You know very well it's shut!" My voice squeaked down the concrete stairs, his boomed.

"Nevertheless."

"The post mortems are being done in turn using the labs that are still open. There are others ahead in the queue."

He waited.

"We could use one of the live bio labs," I said reluctantly. "But as soon as anyone needs it we'd have to move. And you'd have to disappear. I can't cover for you if someone comes in. Nobody must see you, ok?"

"Then isn't it lucky that everyone is in a staff meeting," said Sherlock, and grinned.

I let out an inarticulate squawk as he bounded down the stairs with a merry clip of his heels.

Reincarnation had done nothing to reduce his ego, then.


	9. Chapter 9

"Scalpel."

Striplights, lab coats, cold coffee, wee small hours. Tissue samples and fudged permission to be in this area.

"Molly. Scalpel."

I placed it in his outstretched hand. "No point asking what your last slave died of."

No reply.

I sighed and continued scanning my own samples. The answer to my question was obvious, anyway: low self esteem.

"The butler did it."

Sherlock's voice made me jump. My tissue sample swam about in front of my eyes and I sat back from its bright circle, blinking.

He was smiling, his smile of dark triumph. "Lestrade's going to have kittens. Cliches aside, in this case the butler actually did it."

He moved so that I could look into his scope. "See? Unmistakably a sample from a person on low dose aspirin over a long period. Lord Morningside claimed the housemaid tripped, but I think it much more likely that she suffered a minor cardiac event on surprising him in flagrante with the butler. The butler, desperate to cover for his employer, then panicked and pushed her off the balcony."

Sherlock stood, gathering his jacket over his arm. "I'll confront the butler in the cells. Should be all sorted by the time Lestrade gets into work tomorrow." He began flinging his jacket around his shoulders, preparatory to striding out without a backwards glance.

"Wait," I said.

He paused, his hand stretched towards the enormous black coat he liked to wear.

"This isn't conclusive," I said. "You're right, the investigation has centred on the trauma the housemaid sustained when she hit the gravel. But to really know what was going on you need more evidence than this."

I stood too.

He waited, poised, a slight smile on his lips.

"You need to see the heart," I said. "The heart is the key."

He blinked once. Scanned me, searching for additional meanings. Blinked again, hard down and up, a camera capturing all data. "Can you get it?"

"Yes."

He dropped the coat and began taking off his jacket. He plucked his phone from his pocket and began fiddling with it, already zooming away to some other case, some other call on his massive intellect.

I took a deep breath and released it slowly. Giant brain or no, I'm nobody's pushover. And given he still owed me the world's biggest favour -

He noticed that I was not scurrying to retrieve an organ for him. He lifted his head, scanned my face, then let his inspection take in my hair, throat, breasts, belly and legs. When he met my eyes again he seemed to have woken up. "Please," he said.

"Thank you," I replied, and as I walked away I knew he was watching, reviewing all the meanings that he suspected, that he must know, were there.


	10. Chapter 10

The butler case - Lord Morningside's exculpation - was a headline-maker. By seven am the BBC had it, and Morningside's own software sent it rippling through a billion mobile devices.

When I emerged, yawning, onto the frosted street, John was there with an armful of papers, suggesting we grab an after-work coffee.

He hugged me and aimed a kiss at my mouth. I coughed - such cold air out here! - and ducked away, apologising.

"God I've missed you," John said. He reached for my hand - an automatic gesture, an assumption of complicity.

"Mmn," I said. Despite having spent hours in company with the King of liars, I was still hopeless at deception. No wonder Sherlock had kept clear of me during his false death: it was in sheer terror that my rubbish acting would give him away.

"Nice hot coffee, warm us up?" John was leading me away, my hand in his like a marker buoy following a fishing vessel.

"Great," I said.

We ducked into the nearest Starbucks and spread the papers about. There was a lot of Sherlock.

John said, "He's definitely back then. Less than a month and he's cracking high profile cases." He shook his head and handed me my Tall Skinny Extra Hot Whatever.

"Hmm." I skimmed the tabloid version. My brain tried to extract caffeine from the cup and acclimatise to long lens shots of Sherlock gesturing at the balcony of a stately home. Even at a distance and through locked security gates, his grace and certainty were clear. One photo showed him turning toward the camera, his coat swirling around his legs, his hair flying, one gloved hand held up in protest.

I smiled. Someone had said something stupid, or possibly, just said something, and the great man's train of thought was supposedly interrupted.

As if. Sherlock's train of thought wasn't derailed by anything. He just enjoyed busting people's chops about his sacred deduction process. I'd been on the sharp end of that a few times myself, before he realised I could be useful and I realised he was mostly just bluster.

"You got him access to the evidence for this, didn't you," John said in a very neutral voice. He sipped his drink and turned a page with studied nonchalance.

"Yes." I stopped looking at Irritated Detective Steals Scene and tried to gather my own thoughts.

"The reports don't mention you," John said. "You don't get any credit. Why not?"

I hesitated. I really ought to maintain the charade, but it's hard to lie to an honest person. "I made him promise not to say anything."

Now there was John's stare, not remotely nonchalant. "Sherlock? You've seen him?"

Seen him? Spent all night with him. Up to our elbows in corpses to be sure, but yes, we had just spent eight hours alone together in a darkened room. "Yes."

John was leaning in now, urgent. "Did he seem ok to you?"

It was not the question I was afraid of. "Um, yeah. Fine. You know. Moody and brilliant."

"Hmmm. He's been a bit off with me. I think - no, it's none of our business."

I couldn't make any speculative suggestions about Sherlock which would not immediately seem incriminating. So I said nothing.

Because I could have stopped helping Sherlock. If I valued my job that's what I would do. If Tom Sands found out, my career would be dogfood.

But instead I unlocked whichever lab was available and basically waited for Sherlock to show up. Before Moriarty, Sherlock would use my lab about twice a week. Since he got back, he turned up every night.

It was, as ever, purely work. I wore my badge; he wore his air of innate superiority. But the work was collaborative. It was absorbing. It was based on mutual respect, and, given, that it was both illicit and dangerous, it was intimate.

That ought to have made me feel guilty.

Ought to.

"I guess it's just the way Sherlock is," John was saying. "When he wants to talk about it he will. We can't change him."

My phone buzzed. I was thinking, _But I don't want to change him, not one tiny bit._ I hoisted my bag and scrabbled up my phone.

A text. From Sherlock. _Thanks._

I held my phone quite still as if this one word might slide off onto the sticky floor and be trampled by commuters, careless that they were destroying something precious and irreplaceable. Then I texted back, No problem.

I was still in the act of putting my phone away as if this was some dull work message when Sherlock messaged me again. Just one word but I'd spent all night in that lab with him and I can interpret the data as well as the next girl.

_Breakfast?_

I didn't hesitate. I turned to John and said, "I've got to go. sorry. A work thing. I'll see you soon, ok?" And without so much as a peck on the cheek for him I stood, prepared to run from Starbucks to wherever Sherlock might be-

-Except that before I could take a step, he was there, my very own Tall Skinny Extra Hot Whatever, smirking at me and sliding into the seat opposite mine.

I sank back down.

"I was in the area," Sherlock said firmly.

"I'll get you a coffee," said John.

"Revolting," said Sherlock.

John went anyway.

Like lightning Sherlock's gloved hand shot out to grip mine. The black leather was soft. His eyes sparkled.

"You don't eat breakfast," I said.

He grinned at me, a frank, open grin, and at once he was young and free and careless like any young bloke who's just scored a win in his job. "Today I might."

John came back with the coffee.

"Sugar," said Sherlock without turning round. I saw John roll his eyes and go back for some.

Sherlock pulled his hand free, then tore off that glove and slid his palm against my cheek. He turned my face side to side, inspecting my lipstick, my hair. I drew in breath sharply as our skin made contact. "No hello kiss, no embrace, despite a week's separation," he said.

"Two weeks," I said.

"No more sex on the cards in the near future, either," Sherlock said. "Hmmn."

"No," I said, and then shut up because he'd just got me to admit that there had been sex in the past, dammit.

"What happened to your work thing?" said John to me, returning with sugar and a plate of Danish pastries. He lay both in front of Sherlock, who selected a maple pecan plait.

John raised his eyebrows at me.

"I told work to get stuffed." This was plausible.

"So you should. You deserve a break, not more slog." John seemed to have forgotten his snarkiness about my seeing Sherlock, now that Sherlock was here.

"Mmmn."

"Speaking of which, are you still on for tomorrow?"

Tomorrow: a proposed day of hanging out together in a cosy pub, with slap-up lunch, a few drinks, and (implied) back to mine after for sex.

Sherlock was gazing at me. He was projecting something, but I had no idea what.

"Work's pretty mad at the moment," I said.

"Oh Molly. Have a heart. You can't have seen each other for days," said Sherlock.

"Two weeks," said John.

I scowled at Sherlock and then covered it with a smile as John turned to me. "I don't know if I can, sorry."

"I'm starting to really dislike your boss," said John.

I was watching Sherlock pick the pecans off his pastry. He held each one, waved it around a bit, then dropped it on his plate. It created a mess, but nothing was going into his mouth. "The case isn't over, is it," I said.

He curled his lip. "Remember the Hatton Garden robbery?"

"Which one?" I said.

"Exactly. Those weren't repeat heists, trying to go one better every time. Those burglars were searching for something "

"Such as?" John put another Danish on Sherlock's plate.

"Not jewels," said Sherlock drily. "Something a lot less shiny by now, I'd imagine."

By now... Echoes of Tom Sands sarcasm at my protest over morgue facilities. I shivered.

"Don't worry," and now Sherlock addressed me. "They didn't find it. I took the precaution of removing and destroying it just prior to the last robbery."

"What?" I asked, but he had started attacking his next not-breakfast.

"I need to get into your lab, Molly," he said then."Your real lab. When will it reopen?"

"At Tom Sands' whim. I can't see anything major being done to it. From what I can make out they've put in new lights and done some tidying."

Sherlock ducked in air between his teeth. "Bad, very bad."

He rose abruptly and picked up his gloves. "Well, I am quite sated. Enjoy your date. I must see a grateful peer about a massive favour."

He nodded at us, his gaze resting first on John then, just as blandly, on me. Then he swept out, drawing a ripple of recognition behind him.

"Well," said John. " That was odd."

"Hmmm," I said, looking at the untouched food. "Yes, it was."


End file.
